Aug 14 SOMEDAY THEY'LL KNOW

I had a two hour drive recently and, as always, I started thinking. Really thinking.

My 18-month-old was sleeping in the back and I'm pretty sure the car was silent because WHEN IS IT EVER, so I didn't turn any music on, and a thought crossed my mind that had tears springing up almost instantly.

Someday they'll know.

Someday my kids will be adults. They'll have their own lives, maybe their own husbands, and selfishly I hope they'll have their own kids. And as all new adults do, they'll start to see their parents differently.

They'll start to understand more of who we were and what we were doing.

And they'll know.

They'll know things like what it's like to move while pregnant, what it's like to sell a house and how relieving it is to do it quickly and painlessly. They'll know what it's like to take a risk for a job, and I hope they'll know what it's like to put their lives on the line for what they believe in.

Their stories will be different, but I suspect there will be a point where they look at our story and they'll know us. They'll realize that mom was 29 and pregnant when they moved to Asheville. That she delivered just nine weeks after arriving. That they moved to start a church from nothing. That they traded one of the most stable jobs in the southeast for something that had little chance of working out.

They'll know we were church planters.

I don't know where the knowledge will come from. Maybe it will hit my oldest, Liv, as she drives her kids by Homewood Estates during a visit with Grandma and Grandpa, telling them about how unfair it was that Eliza and Piper got to play in the kid room but she had to stay with mom. I don't know if it'll hit Eliza, my middle baby, as she passes through her birth town on the way to the beach one year. Maybe it'll hit Piper, the youngest, during an interview, or when she has to use my maiden name as a password retrieval hint for some futuristic email account.

When I thought about them as adults, coming to know us as adults, I felt so vulnerable but also so kept. Like the long-term perspective gave me comfort, reminding me that this intense period is not the whole story. I hope it's the main story, but no matter what, there's more to me, and to us.

It also made me feel so brave. One day they'll understand the courage it took to do this, and that's good, because it means we've modeled the courage we want them to have. I want them to do the scary thing for Jesus' sake. I want them to say yes. I want them to look into their husband's eyes or my eyes or their own beautiful eyes in the mirror, heart beating hard and answer faithfully, "I think we're going to do this."

It will look different for them, but I want them to know what we did so that they can do it too. And on that drive, it occurred to me that one day, they will.

Kristi and her husband are church planters in Asheville, North Carolina. They’re doing the thing they said they’d never do (start a church plant from scratch) because ignoring God’s call is far scarier. Kristi blogs about faith, family, and funny little things at And Babies Don’t Keep.